


Just That Little Bit Darker

by tehsoupie (TheSoup), The Soup (TheSoup)



Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: M/M, One-Sided Relationship, Unrequited Crush, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-03
Updated: 2010-07-03
Packaged: 2018-05-15 10:27:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5782792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoup/pseuds/tehsoupie, https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoup/pseuds/The%20Soup
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Spy longs for his far-off love, Engineer longs for the unobtainable as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just That Little Bit Darker

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for Team Fortress 2. Hope it's not too terrible.
> 
> Written for the 31_days prompt, "Don't shake me loose of her" from July 3, 2010. This is the expanded version that got posted on FanFiction.net.

 

\--    
Caught in memories and secrets and possible betrayals, the ever-elusive Spy blew out a crisp tendril of smoke from the corner of his lip. He was nothing if not elegant in his mannerisms as he smiled faintly, folding a certain ragged photograph precisely into quarters before concealing it in his breast pocket.

He continued smoking, and when he was done with that cigarette, he lit up another. After that one, another. He paced about some, rubbed his chin some, sighed and sighed again and cracked his neck, hummed and sighed some more -- then, finally,  he leaned against the railing of Sniper’s abandoned loft with arms locked over his chest.

He muttered something in French, syllables bitter with insult and tangy with lustful regret.

*

 Engineer couldn’t have told ya one word of what was said, but he conducted theories from the sounds themselves. They weren’t happy sounds, those softly spoken words.

Hardly words at all – more like breaths, maybe like moans.

*

Engineer understood through an instinctual spike what was going on, watching Spy for what could have been a decade.

He had finished tuning up Spy’s Invisiwatch, improved it so Spy could remain cloaked longer and without it failing at the worse possible moment. With the joy of a child showing Mom and Dad a picture drawn specially for them, he went to find him. He asked around RED base, the Scout finally telling him that Spy went out for a smoke with an annoyed cluck of his tongue as he tailed after Sniper like a puppy to its ma.

 Engie immediately sought out the balcony where Sniper was famous for taking both BLU Heavy and his Medic out with a single arrow, pinning them to the wall behind them through their conjoined eye sockets. The moment would forever adorn the walls of RED history, a proud moment indeed.

*

Engie was once feeling so hot with the fever of accomplishment, so hot he could barely contain himself. The fever, inevitably, passed on when he couldn’t take one step further into the doorway. 

Rather than the fever intensifying and warming other organs not kept in his chest, a sickening chill replaced it when he saw Spy.

Now growing weaker and nauseous with the chill in his Texas bones, Engineer found himself akin to the blinking light bulb fighting desperately to stay alive in the Recreation Room, flickering wildly – seconds, mere seconds, away from going out completely at any time.  

Any second now.

*

No matter how Engie’s rational brain tried to fix it with excuses and explanations that would have normally made perfect sense as to why he was eager to see Spy, he couldn’t hide it from himself – A sinking sensation told him that he was mighty inferior to the BLU Scout’s mom. 

Even though she wasn’t present physically, Spy’s snappish movements told of her being right there, mocking him in some way with her ghostly ability to turn a man of espionage into a quivering mass of tension.

Engie slowly turned from the scene of the Spy mooning about on the balcony, pushing his hard hat down over his eyes. The Invisiwatch crackled woefully in the rubbery palm of his other hand.

He was shamed by this, shamed by childish feelings of a man crush that made him into gooey puddin’, the kind his ma used to make.

Shamed more by the fact that he was married.

_Married men shouldn’t feel like this towards other men,_ Engie reasoned. _That just ain’t right._

None of it was.

*

It couldn’t fight any longer. Any second now – there, it went. 

The little light bulb gave out.

And like the Recreation Room, Engineer’s internal world grew just that little bit darker.

\--

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> ;I own nothing but the words and situations I control.  
> First time writing TF2, with a pairing I typically feel pretty neutral about. I liked it more by the end of this.


End file.
